Opinion & Commentary

Dallas, it feels like you are having a moment. Creative groups in this town are getting organized, getting spaces and throwing parties. And thank you! It keeps me busy and overserved. With every invite to a new collective’s first soiree, I am pleased to see that smaller communities are forming…

As Eric noted earlier, there’s a hilarious kind of stand-off going on these days between Dallas Police Chief David Brown, who says petty theft rates in the city have fallen because of his own tough police work, and Dallas Morning News reporters Steve Thompson and Tanya Eiserer, who proved in…

Christopher Todd Penn was a just a kid when he was held at knife-point in the bathroom of an Iron Maiden concert. He shouted “NO” and ran for his life, instead of giving up the goods. Later, after relocating to the area, he became more of a Tripping Daisy fan…

OK, we start with a cartoon on the web site of the McKinney Tea Party, depicting President Obama as a high-stepping, vaguely simian character dressed as a trumpeter in a marching band. The headline is “McKinney Sustainability Plan.” A label over the president identifies him as, “Dear Leader Obama.” According…

Latest twist in the great imaginary vote fraud epidemic of 2012: Now Republicans are nabbed doing exactly the same stuff they have accused Democrats of doing. In a piece in this morning’s New York Times we get a peek at voter hanky-panky, GOP-style. An operative named Nathan Sproul, who has…

Hey, before the moment passes, let’s make sure we know exactly what was at stake in Scott Griggs’ remarks about the dump last Monday morning. City Council member Griggs called out city staff on the question of exactly how much money really gets stolen every year by city employees at…

Dear Mexican: Why do so many Chicanos claim to be Aztec? CHICANO STUCK IN LEAVENWORTH Dear Chicano: You’re right. The beaner love for everything Aztec mostly stems from the Chicano Movement, which appropriated various Mexican iconography to make a long-vanquished culture their own during an era when they were searching…

This is for the paddlers. Not for me. No more ranting by me, no more calling people stupid. Even if they are. We are all on our knees here, pleading. All around me are paddlers — canoe paddlers, kayak paddlers. We’re pilgrims, walking on our knees to City Hall with…

Let’s count this out. First, American Airlines management threatens to haul the pilots union into court if the pilots don’t stop finding ways to screw up the flight schedule. See also: – American Airline Pilots’ Slowdown Wins a Victory, Despite What You Read in the DMN Second, seats on American…

All you ambitious students out there, please take time to understand what Governor Rick Perry is really doing to you when he says he wants to help you graduate from college. It’s the opposite. See also: – Rick Perry’s Manufactured Miracle What Perry really wants to do is the same…

Starting at age 19, Bart Rose ran First Street Audio in Forth Worth. That was 1989. In 2008, he took over a facility called Digital Post & Production, changed the name to Fort Worth Sound, and has since worked with The Toadies, Spot and many more. He’s hosted outside producers…

It is upon us: Fair season. Thirty days of fried food, weird crafts, blue-ribbon jams and petting zoos. The people watching, square dancing and pig racing are in full bloom in Fair Park, but as we hit October, Dallas will also prep for two of the biggest college football weekends…

David Carr, who writes a media column for The New York Times, has a piece in today’s paper about dumb it is for Republicans to claim the mainstream media are biased against Mitt Romney. He pulls a bit of a trick, seems to me, by folding claims of media bias…

Not that we could know anything here at my house about a matter so remote and complex as the looming budget crisis at the U.S. Postal Service, subject of an editorial in today’s New York Times. We did notice and observe here last March that it was way more difficult…

The question of new and more highways in city centers is too profound, too generational, too close to the heart of things: it’s never going to get a rational answer. The whole thing is way beyond reason. We’ll have to go with our guts, after we decide what our guts…

Hey mojado: Since when do you think it’s OK to fuck up the facts of your wretched culture and concentrate on the few who have done something with their lives? For the most part, Mexicans are perverted, short, dark, little disgusting animals. You fit into that category. They shit out…

After grief, the next thing that came to me when I heard about the death of Thabiti Olatunji was his story. It’s not the one we normally tell. Olatunji died two weeks ago. His first name is pronounced with a hard T, Ta-BEE-tee. I think he was 64 years old…

I do not love a good conspiracy theory as much as the next guy. I love a good conspiracy theory way more than the next guy. I know my conspiracy theories. Conspiracy Theories R Me. For me, the most fun ones, because of the puzzle-solving element, are the riddles wrapped…

Mitchell Schnurman is a really good business reporter. The Dallas Morning News scored a major coup recently when it hired him away from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. He’s an ace, the author of serial scoops on airline industry management. But as we see again in today’s paper, Schnurman is strangely…

Paul Ford spent some time playing in a couple local bands, including The London Scar. In 1997, at only 16 years old, he and a colleague formed Yuppiefest, which brought local talent to the ‘burbs of Lewisville, including Bowling For Soup, The Latchkey Kids, Darlington and more. Ford claims they…